Dear Sir,

According to reliable intelligence reports, it is absolutely certain now that the Assad regime has used chemical weapons against its own population. It has crossed the red line.
The use of chemical weapons is prohibited in international armed conflicts under a series of treaties, including The Hague declaration concerning asphyxiating gases, the Geneva gas protocol, the Chemical Weapons Convention and the statutes of the International Criminal Court.
Numerous military manuals restate the prohibition of the use of chemical weapons. The ban on the use of chemical weapons, contained in the Chemical Weapons Convention, applies in all armed conflicts.
Without a doubt, chemical weapons are cruel and have a devastating impact on those exposed to them. Chemical weapons are classified as arms that use toxic chemical substances to harm or kill people during war.
The certainty of suffering, pain and death is associated with chemical weapons used in Syria. They are blood agents, choking agents, blister agents and nerve agents.
History will condemn us all for being bystanders, in the face of these monstrous crimes against humanity.

Farouk Araie
farouk.araie@telkomsa.net

Concern
over verdicts

Dear Sir,

Bangladesh has hanged an Islamist party figure for alleged atrocities committed during its 1971 war of independence. Mir Quasem Ali, 63, a key financier of the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was executed at Kashimpur Central Jail on the outskirts of Dhaka, after being accused of murder, confinement, torture and incitement to religious hatred during the 1971 war.
But Ali, now a media tycoon, was just 17 at that time.
So far five Jamat-e-Islami leaders have received death sentences from Bangladesh’s war crime tribunal and have been hanged in different parts of country.
Ghulam Azam, a former chief of Jamat-e-Islami,  died just days ago in prison. He was 90.
Human rights organisations have expressed serious concerns over the recent verdicts of Bangladesh’s war tribunal.
European Parliament members have been worried over the establishment of the controversial war crime tribunal and its harsh sentences.
Opposition parties claim that the government is trying to divert people’s attention from real issues

Khawaja Umer Farooq
PO Box 7684
Jeddah
Saudi Arabia